Toma Virk’s scientific monograph »Under Prešerno’s head« focuses on the research of the “transitional intersections” of Slovenian literature in the period after 1990, against the background of the traditional social role that Slovenian literature had in the past, before national independence. The first part of the book is theoretical, with a precise reading of the writings of Dušan Pirjevac, partly also of Janko Kos, it claims that the history of literature in Slovenia defined the specifics of Slovenian literature in connection with its social role – until the First World War or even the Second World War, it served the purpose of consolidating national consciousness. The author confirms these theses and supplements them with some more recent insights. In the second part of the monograph, he deals with the social role of Slovenian literature from 1945 to 1990. Analyzing social-historical and cultural-political events, above all those in Slovenian literary culture, he claims that literature in that period still has a very significant, even irreplaceable social role and function, but not only as the basis of national consciousness, but above all as a substitute for the missing institutions of democratic political pluralism. The central question of the book is what happened to the social role of literature after 1990, when Slovenians replaced both traditional shortcomings, got their own state and parliamentary democracy. The author particularly analyzes trends in Slovenian poetry, prose and drama that occurred after the independence. For the last decade of the 20th century, he notes a relatively vague involvement of literature in social and political events, but after the year 2000 this changed. Virk observed the up-to-date response of literary texts to current political events, but without the constructive effect characteristic of the previous two considered periods. He sees one of the reasons for that in the social marginalization of literature, and the solution in pointing out the ethical potential of literature.